Friday, February 10, 2017

7 days with... Hitman: Season 1

In
the years since the last entry in their flagship series, 2012’s
much maligned (though underappreciated IMHO) Hitman: Absolution, the
developers at IO Interactive have more or less kicked the series off
from scratch with 2016’s episodic release, aptly dubbed ‘Hitman’.
As a long time fan of the series, I felt I’d be better served by
waiting for the eventual retail release, and my patience was rewarded
with ‘Hitman: Season 1’.

The Arrival...

‘Hitman’
kicks off with the arrival of Agent 47 at an unknown location in a
remote mountain fortress, like something out of Cold War James Bond.
He’s introduced to his handler, Diana, and from there, the missions
commence. The first two locales are brilliantly executed training
scenarios, complete with faux backdrops, sparsely constructed plywood
set dressing, and a dense crowd of knowing participants who often
break character. They set the tone pretty well, and do a brilliant
job of providing you a pair of water wings before throwing you into
the deep end. The pittance of locations that follow; Paris, Sapienza,
Marrakesh, Bangkok, Colorado, and Hokkaido don’t seem like much on
paper, but each is a huge, diverse sandbox with an unrivalled
attention to detail, and a nigh infinite number of potential
scenarios for hitting your assigned marks. The central story mode is
suitably cryptic, and each level assigns two targets, and essentially
dumps you at a selected starting location, leaving the rest up to
you. What’s insane, is the sheer depth of extra-curricular
activities the game tosses in for each setting. You’ve got
additional scenarios as rich as the story missions, you have time
sensitive ‘illusive targets’ that give you a window of days (in
real world time) and only a single attempt to take them out. The
contracts mode is held over from Absolution as well, albeit with
significant upgrades, and allows for community created missions on
any map, and right now, there are HUNDREDS to chose from. You’re
rated on performance, and you unlock challenges and opportunities by
tackling missions in new ways, and some of these are downright
bastards to find and complete. Bottom line: There’s a metric ton of
replay here for those who enjoy a creative and patient approach.

So much to do... So many to kill...

The
Good:

The
diverse sandbox is bolstered by AI and gameplay systems that create a
logical and believable world for the player to roam. Scenarios are
driven almost entirely by how you interpret the game’s varied
systems, play the AI, and push back against the boundaries the
developers establish. The first location alone, Paris, tasks you with
eliminating a fashion world power couple as one of them organizes a
world class runway display on the main floor, while the other meets
with global elites upstairs and tries to sell off a list of
undercover operatives at a covert auction. Of the wealth of options
available to you, you might end up attending said auction (and even
winning the bid!), or you could end up on the catwalk as a ponce
artiste showing off the spring collection. A quick thumb through of
the challenges before you start a level can help out if you’re
stuck, or at the very least give you some idea of the depth of
options available.

One example of an "illusive target".

Character
AI is generally reactive and excellent. Nothing ever feels scripted
or pre-planned. Guard routes are logical and varied, and you never
feel like you’re taking advantage of pre-determined routines.
There’s still a bit of waiting involved, rather than taking
advantage of scripted AI by standing around, you legitimately feel
like you’re waiting for prime opportunities. You can’t, under any
circumstances, get away with being overly aggressive. Subduing within
line of sight is impossible, and direct approaches almost always
result in detection and your own destruction. Every character on the
map hears, sees, and reacts in a realistic fashion to your actions,
without ever feeling like they’re cheating. This can really make
grabbing new disguises and accessing new areas a tricky prospect, as
you often have to play a subtle game of divide and conquer, luring a
lonely waiter or bodyguard to an isolated location long enough to
subdue him and stash his unconscious (or dead) form someplace subtle.
This can be doubly tricky when you’ve got what feels like hundreds
of people surrounding you.

The crowded streets of Marrakesh.

The
scenarios are bolstered by some top drawer writing; ‘Hitman’
feels like a cold war spy thriller at its heart, and the story mode
cutscenes and mission briefs are wonderfully presented, without any
of the unsubtle off-color humor that made the old entries in the
series straddle the line between grim and goofy. This is straight
faced, lean, and effective stuff for those of us who grew up in the
age of the Euro spy-thriller. New wave techno beats underscore the
action, the villains are suitably enigmatic, and the game never gets
mired in Agent 47’s origins. There are no gaudy sci-fi white labs
or clones here, and no angst; just a driven, cold, calculating figure
that allows you to project your own inner assassin bad-ass.

I’d
be remiss if I didn’t mention the beautiful locales. IO is subtle
with the design, trading glossy next-gen sheen for stark realism, and
even when crowds are at their most dense, like the packed Marrakesh
streets, the framerate remains smooth and stable. There’s HDR
support in there for those with compatible displays as well.

Sapienza

The
Bad:

There’s
really not a lot to talk about here, though it must be said, Hitman’s
gunplay is pretty weak. This isn’t a game that’s designed for you
to shoot your way out of bad situations, or build up a hundreds o
corpses body count as you progress, but it’d have been nice to be
able to effectively pull a gun and shoot someone in rapid fashion if
it meant the difference between a restart or finishing a level.
Aiming is slow and twitchy, which doesn’t mesh well with the cover
mechanics and the over the shoulder aim. The game really feels like
it could function as a capable third person shooter, and there are
aim assist and sensitivity options, but nothing ever really makes the
shooting mechanics work at an even serviceable level. Granted, Hitman
really isn’t that kind of shooter, but the option to draw down on
some bad guys in competent fashion really seems like it would fit the
all encompassing sandbox. It’s a critique to be sure, maybe a
little bit of a nitpick, but everything else works so damn well that
I couldn’t help but draw attention to it.

Awkward...

The
Ugly:

The
Glacier engine is not cutting edge tech, and that doesn’t always
work to the betterment of ‘Hitman’. It does a phenomenal job of
filling a screen with hundreds moving, thinking people, and at times
it can look pretty stellar in subtle fashion, but overall, Hitman’s
more realistic bent and the relative age of the engine does give
things a kind of bland flavor. Character animations and transitions
sometimes look a little stiff as well. It’s not even remotely a
dealbreaker, and this really isn't the sort of game you buy for
presentation value. Don’t use it as a show off piece and expect
people to be amazed.

IO
Interactive have taken almost 20 years of Hitman, and stripped it out
to its very core. What they then put back together is an elegant, no
fluff, no fat package that is really the essence of of everything
that’s been good or great about the series since its inception. As
a sandbox, it’s as immersive and complex as it needs to be, and it
does a fantastic job of separating the core experience from the
torrent of extras. The story is lean, but effective, and the overall
package, complete with awesome steelbook and sleeve belies its
origins as an episodic release and really presents a phenomenal
release. This one is highly recommended to fans of the stealth genre,
and it’s a must own for fans of the series. I can’t wait to seen
where they take us in season 2!